Scientific researches! New discoveries in pneumaticks!, or, An experimental lecture on the powers of air [graphic] / Js. Gillray inv. & fect.

"A satire on the fashionable lectures at the Royal Institution. The audience are in a semicircle facing the lecturer's table, which is covered with apparatus. The lecturer, probably not Garnett but Thomas Young who succeeded him as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Institute in July 1801, and who delivered thirty lectures there between January and May 1802, is experimenting on Sir J. C. Hippisley (left). Holding him by the nose, he applies to his mouth a tube from a series of retorts in which a gas has been made. The result is a violent explosion of flame and smoke from the victim's breeches. Next Young stands Humphry Davy, assistant lecturer to the Institute since July 1801. Holding a pair of bellows with vapour and gas spouting from its nozzle, he watches the experiment with a sardonic smile. Facing the table from the right, Count Rumford (see BMSat 9565) stands a little apart from the audience, looking on with a complacent and proprietary smile; he wears an order. On the extreme right the audience are Isaac D 'Israeli, wearing spectacles over half-closed eyes, Lord Gower, watching impassively, and Lord Stanhope, looking intently through an eyeglass. Beside him on the padded green bench is an open book: 'Hints on the nature of Air requir'd for the new French Diving Boat.' (Fulton's submarine was tried in Brest harbour in 1801, and a small vessel was blown up by a torpedo; Stanhope's experiments with steam navigation had been unsucces-ful, cf. BMSat 8640.) Two unidentified ladies watch open-eyed. Immediately in front of Stanhope sits Lord Pomfret, enormously stout, his eyes almost shut. These watch from the right. Facing the lecturer sit (right to left) Sir H. Englefield, holding note-book and pencil, and a thin and elderly lady turned in profile, taking notes earnestly, but not watching the experiment. ..."--British Museum online catalogue.